Medical students said to skip military service in droves

Rumors that physician Chao Chien-min (趙建銘), President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) son-in-law to be, used fraudulent documents to avoid military service has sparked new interest in a longstanding problem: How a large number of medical students are avoiding compulsory military service.

According to reports in the Chinese-language press yesterday, a medical officer has alleged that professors of some medical schools have composed fake diagnosis statements. These documents allegedly help male students avoid mandatory military service.

"It is truly unbelievable that nearly 50 percent of medical students are exempt from military service," an army doctor said yesterday.

The medical officer said that during the past year when he worked at a military hospital, he had seen a host of medical school students, who appeared to be quite healthy, deemed unfit for army service because of physical disabilities.

According to the officer, most of those students were said to suffer from asthma, with certificates written by doctors specializing in the disease to prove it. He said he had once called such a doctor to seek an explanation, but the doctor was unable to provide a credible answer.

The officer said that there is also a reportedly high rate of asthma sufferers in Taiwan, especially among medical students. Citing National Taiwan University (台大) as an example, he said almost half of the school's medical graduates were exempt from military service.

"Who would believe that so many of these social elite happen to be physically indisposed?" he said.

Chao, who graduated from National Taiwan University's medical department in 1996, was said to have been excused from military service because he suffered from gout.

The Control Yuan, the government's supreme watchdog, said that in comparison with the 3 percent of males who are judged to be physically unfit for army service, the 30 percent of medical students who are declared unfit for military service is unreasonably high.